The Vision of Sudden Death, by Thomas de Quincey

Preface

THE reader is to understand this present paper, in its two sections of The Vision, &c.,
and The Dream–Fugue, as connected with a previous paper on The English Mail–Coach. The ultimate
object was the Dream–Fugue, as an attempt to wrestle with the utmost efforts of music in dealing with a colossal form
of impassioned horror. The Vision of Sudden Death contains the mail-coach incident, which did really occur, and did
really suggest the variations of the Dream, here taken up by the Fugue, as well as other variations not now recorded.
Confluent with these impressions, from the terrific experience on the Manchester and Glasgow mail, were other and more
general impressions, derived from long familiarity with the English mail, as developed in the former paper;
impressions, for instance, of animal beauty and power, of rapid motion, at that time unprecedented, of connection with
the government and public business of a great nation, but, above all, of connection with the national victories at an
unexampled crisis — the mail being the privileged organ for publishing and dispersing all news of that kind. From this
function of the mail, arises naturally the introduction of Waterloo into the fourth variation of the Fugue; for the
mail itself having been carried into the dreams by the incident in the Vision, naturally all the accessory
circumstances of pomp and grandeur investing this national carriage followed in the train of the principal image.